Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns eBook

Hans Hertig’s desire to get some of his old
friends to enlist bore some fruit. Three men
promised to go down to the enlistment bureau on Saturday
afternoon, when they had a half holiday.

The Seacove party then wanted to go to a dining-room
for dinner; but Whistler excused himself. He
was hungry enough; but he “had other fish to
fry,” he whispered to Torrance.

“Come around by the Upper Road—­same
way we got here,” directed Whistler. “I’ll
meet you at the bridge. Wait if I’m not
there.”

“What is the matter with you, Whistler?”
demanded Al.

But although Morgan went away without making answer,
he knew that his chum would do as he was asked, and
bluff off the others when they asked questions, too.

Philip Morgan hurried past the factories and the few
houses which lay in this direction. The land
near the dam which had been built across the valley
was so sterile that few people lived in this neighborhood.

Up on the ridges, on either side, were farms; but
this was a wild piece of scrub at the foot of the
dam. One could jump a rabbit in it, or get up
a flock of quail at almost any time during the hunting
season.

Like most boys of Seacove, as well as Elmvale, Whistler
was familiar with this stretch of untamed ground and
plunged into it with full knowledge of its tangled
brier patches and rough quarries. He started
diagonally for the dam, and in a brief time came to
the edge of the shallow channel, which now carried
the overflow of the huge reservoir behind the dam
down to the cove.

As he followed this stream, he could not help thinking
of the possibility of a break occurring in the high
wall of masonry which loomed ahead of him. If
there should be any undiscovered weakness in the wall!
Or if an enemy should sink a charge of dynamite, or
some other high explosive, at the base of the dam
and blow a hole through it!

He did not see any one moving about the dam either
above or below. He knew that on the ridge, level
with the top of the barrier, lived a man they called
the dam superintendent. He sometimes walked across
the embankment, from end to end; a privilege forbidden
to others.

But Whistler was quite sure that this dam superintendent
seldom went to the foot of the wall, or examined the
face of it for any break in the stonework. Of
course, the dam had stood secure for so many years
that it seemed improbable that it would fail in any
part now.

But Whistler Morgan was not considering any leakage
of the water through the masonry which might endanger
the foundation of the dam. Such seepage must
have shown itself long ago if the barrier had not been
properly constructed.

It was of a sudden, unexpected, and treacherous blow-out
that the young sailor was thinking. That man
in the bushes, who had seemed so desirous of hiding
from the passers-by and whose interest in the face
of the dam had been so marked, puzzled Phil and excited
his suspicions.